Chapter I: HAD deferred my call upon Miss Bruce until I should receive (1)

Sullivan’s answer to my letter; but when his telegram came I was in a quandary. It struck me as ambiguous. And what could be the extreme haste that made a telegram advisable? Or, perhaps, was the whole thing only one of Jerry Sullivan’s jokes?

Meantime I was wearing Miss Jeanie Bruce’s ring. Once it struck me that if I did not mean to call upon her, I ought to send it back. But I did mean to call upon her. There never was any question about that, from the first. I did not in the least approve of her, but I meant to call upon her, if only to tell her so. Her conversation had revealed a certain indifference to human life, but she had very soft and gentle eyes. Like the face of the boy whom Cousin Kirk had shot, they “haunted me yet.”

Coe noticed my ring. Oddly enough, though a foreigner, he had got into the ways of the people quicker than I had; and I saw him looking at it one day, though he said nothing. That is, nothing of the ring; he did ask me whether I had been to see Miss Bruce. So I went; they boarded in a small frame house that belonged to a Mrs. Judge Pennoyer. I suspect it was this female justice who came to the door; it was a Monday afternoon and the house was odorous with soup; but Miss Jeanie was “very much engaged.” The Friday following she was out, and Wednesday I met her walking on the principal street of Knoxville with a tall young man.

“Try Saturday,” said Coe that evening. “I want you to ask those girls for my trip up over the line.” During the summer, Coe had got some rusty rails spiked upon his right of way; and now wished to invite the youths and ladies of Tennessee to run over them in a trial trip.

That day I found Miss Jeanie alone in the parlor, almost as if awaiting me. “I began to think you had forgotten us,” said she, softly. Dear me, how soft her eyes were! I said that I had called there many times.

“You could scarcely expect me to let you in when another gen’leman was here!” said she. “Especially when----” I saw her look at the ring; but she checked herself. My afternoon calls in Salem had not so exclusively monopolized the lady’s attention, and I looked at her, puzzled. Just then the front door-bell rang; and I was confident I heard Mrs. Judge Pennoyer tell someone that Miss Jeanie “was very much engaged.”

My conversation languished. I think that Miss Bruce was disappointed. “Shall I play to you?” I saw her hesitate between “The Shepherd Boy” and a romance of Brinley Richards; and I hastened to reply, “I would rather talk.”-- “But you don’t talk,” cried she. “But I look.”-- “You can look while I play.”-- “Not so well,” said I.-- “I have a new piece--one they sent me from the convent, the Sacré-Cœur, you know, where I was for some years. It is called the ‘Tears of Love.’ The musical instruction of the convent was very good. Sister Ignatia had studied in Italy. I suppose it was better than outside--don’t you?”

I had never studied in a convent, and I don’t think I made much answer, for she went on. “Of course, you know, it is pleasanter in other ways. One has so much more liberty. Yet the most Kentucky ladies are all educated in convents. But I felt that I wished to see more of society. At the Sacré-Cœur they do not allow you to receive your gen’lemen friends except in the presence of the mother superior.”

There was a freshness, a simplicity of method in this young lady’s playing with the boys that quite took my breath away, and to relieve the situation I deemed it best to submit to the “Tears of Love.” Of this piece of music I remember little, save that the composer was continually bringing the left hand over the right to execute unnecessary arpeggios in the treble notes. Jeanie’s girlish figure was so round, and swayed so easily, that I thought this part of the music very pretty.

Then I bethought myself of the object of my visit; and I invited Miss Jeanie and Miss May, on Mr. Coe’s behalf, to make the railroad trip. A Salem instinct made me include Mrs. Judge Pennoyer; I then saw in Miss Bruce’s look that it had been unnecessary. Only when I got out the door did I remember that the ring had, after all, been my main object; to return it, I mean.

On the other side of the street, along by a low white-painted paling, lowered a heavy, hulking fellow in a rusty black frock-coat, a great deal of white shirt, and a black clerical tie. In this garb I recognized the Southern University man, and in the man I had a premonition I saw the redoubtable “Cousin Kirk.”

4.

COE was chartered by the sovereign States of Florida and Alabama to construct his line “from that part of the Atlantic Ocean called the Gulf of Mexico, in the former State,” to a point “at or near” the Tennessee River in the latter. And so “a point at or near the Tennessee River” was the first object of our journey, and this proved as definite a designation as we could give it; though it had public parks and corner lots and a name--on paper. Its name in reality was “Cat Island,” the only native settlement being on a beautifully wooded island thus called, midstream in the river.

“Wouldn’t do to call it that, you know,” said Coe, in a burst of frankness. “Famous place for chills and fever; everybody born on Cat Island, white or black, turns clay-color! So we thought of Bagdad--from its resemblance to the Euphrates.”

Mrs. Judge Pennoyer had come; but so had a strange young man whose name I found was Raoul. He devoted himself to Miss May with a simplicity of purpose amazing to a Northern mind. Hardly anyone knew of the expedition at Knoxville, but when we arrived at Bagdad, that spacious plain was peopled in a way to delight the speculator. “Who are they?” I asked of Coe, puzzled at his evident anxiety where I expected pride. “Who are they, O Caliph of Bagdad?”

“Who are they? The Mesopotamians. Dash it,” he added, “they’ve come, with their wives and children, for the trip.”

So, indeed, they had. Tim Healy met us as we alighted on the platform of the old railroad station--there was, indeed, a platform, but nothing more--and grasping Coe and me warmly by the hand, said rapidly, in the latter’s ear, “had to invite a few of them, you know--prominent gen’lemen of the neighborhood--valuable political influence”--and then, aloud, “General McBride, gen’lemen. Mrs. McBride. Judge Hankinson I think you know. Mr. Coe, I want you fo’ to know Senator Langworthy; one of our most prominent citizens, gen’lemen, an’ I had the grea-at-est difficulty in persuading the senator fo’ to come along. I told him, Mr. Coe, we could show him something of a railroad already----” Coe expressed his acknowledgments.

“Sir, it was a pleasure to study the developments of my country. It does not need to be a citizen of Bagdad to appreciate the advantages of your location,” and the senator waved his hand in the direction of a rusty line of track I then first perceived winding across the prairie from the Tennessee. “Let me introduce to you Mrs. Langworthy.” A pale lady, with bonnet-strings untied and a baby at the breast, was indicated by the second gesture; she looked worn and world-weary, but I lived to learn she had an endurance of hardship Stanley might have envied, and a relish for fried cakes and bacon in the small hours of night that I am sure only an optimist could feel. “My partner, Mr. Hanks. My wife’s sister, Miss McClung.”

By this time we were ready to start. A brand-new locomotive decorated with flowers had backed down awkwardly from the new-laid track to the junction; and we entered what Coe with some pride informed me was the directors’ car. It contained one long saloon, two staterooms, a minute kitchen, and a glass gallery behind.

It was amazing how we all got into it; and when we had, I counted three babies, seven old women, and a dog, besides some twenty men. All had brought their luncheon-baskets, and the babies (except that appertaining unto Mrs. Senator Langworthy) were consoled with bottles. After a prodigious deal of whistling, we were off, and Bagdad resumed its quietude--at least, we thought so; but even then a distant shouting was heard, and Colonel Wilkinson, his wife, and two urchin boys were descried, hastening down the track from the direction of the Bagdad Hotel. Judge Hankinson pulled the bell-cord and then thrust his head out of a window and roared to the engineer. “Stop, driver, it’s Colonel Wilkinson. How are you, colonel?” he added to that gentleman, who had arrived, and was mopping himself with a red silk handkerchief, his wife and offspring still some laps behind. “Almost thought you’d be left.”

“Great heavens, I wish he was!” groaned Coe in my ear.

“Never mind, the judge hasn’t brought Miss Julia,” said Tim Healy; and this time we were really off.

I have neither time nor memory to describe that day; though it was very funny while it lasted, perhaps all the funnier that there was no one to share the humor of it. Everybody was great on the development of the country, and everybody made speeches. We stopped at least twenty times in the first fifteen miles to look at a seam of coal, or a field of iron, or a marble quarry (suitable for the Alhambra Palace or the new State Capitol, sir), or, at least, one of the most wonderful mineral springs of the world--only waiting the completion of Colonel Coe’s line of railroad to become another Saratoga. At all these places we got off the train, and went in a long, straggling, irregular file to inspect, Mrs. Senator Langworthy ruthlessly interrupting the repast of her youngest-born at such moments, and leaving him upon a car-seat in charge of the fireman. At the quarry or mineral spring the proprietor would take his turn in making a little stump speech, standing on the edge and gesticulating into the pool, while the rest of us stood grouped around the margin. Meantime Miss May Bruce and Raoul would go to walk in the woods; and we would hear the engine whistling wildly for us to return. It was a novel interruption to a flirtation, that railway-whistle; but everybody looked upon us amiably as we hurried down to the track; live and let live, and take your time for happiness; no schedule time, as at Salem.

By the hot noon we were above the river valley and winding up the folds of fir-forest that clothed the shaggy shoulders of the mountain. Engine No. 100 puffed and strained, and reeled up before us like a drunken man. We had had our dinner; the sexes began to separate, and even the Langworthy baby went to sleep. Raoul and May were riding on the engine. I left Miss Jeanie Bruce and joined the gentlemen, who were sitting cross-legged and contented in the smoking end of the car, from the glass-housed platform of which we looked already back upon the great central plain from the rising Appalachians.

“Oh, it’s a glorious country,” said “Colonel” Coe; and, I think, winked at me.

“Why, senator,” said the judge, “I have seen a corner-lot sold at Bagdad six times in one day, ’n a thousan’ dollars higher every time.”

“General,” said the senator, “do you know what the original purchase of the Bagdad Land and Investment Company aggregated--for the whole eighteen hundred acres?”

There was a silence. Everybody looked at me. It dawned upon me that I was the “general,” and I wondered why I ranked poor Coe.

“I’ve no idea,” I hastened to add; fearing the senator had followed Coe’s wink.

“Thirty thousand dollars,” answered General McBride, as if it were a game of “School-teacher.” “And they sold three hundred acres for----”

“Fifteen hundred thousand dollars,” resumed Judge Hankinson, with intense solemnity.

“Paper?” said Tim Healy.

“Cash, Captain Healy,” said the judge, fiercely, “cash.”

“I want to know!--Was that the lot you bought of Widow Enraghty, judge?”

A roar of laughter greeted Tim’s answer. People tipped back their chairs, slapping their thighs; the Langworthy baby woke up and cried, and even the judge screwed up his whiskey-softened old face in vain.

“Tell us about it, judge,” said Raoul, who had come back from the engine and was peering over our shoulders. “I’m a young lawyer, and I want to know these tricks.”

“Young man,” said the judge, “I’ll _tell_ you, and let it be a warning to you when you’re married, to be honest and say so” (Raoul blushed violently). “The fact was, I had been acquainted with the widow Enraghty more than fifty years--her husband had got killed in the forties, an’ she was sixty-five if she was a day, and she owned that valuable corner lot opposite the new Court-house and by the building of the Board of Trade.” (“Not built yet,” whispered Coe to me.) “I’d been dickering with her for weeks; but I stood at four thousand, and she wanted five. Now I rode up that morning (it was a fine day; warm and spring-like, and I felt rather sanguine) and I said, ‘What’s your price, Mrs. Enraghty, to-day?’ ‘Six thousand,’ said she. This raise made me kind o’ nervous, an’ I got rash. ‘I’ll give you three thousand,’ said I, ‘cash.’ ‘Here’s your deed,’ says Widow Enraghty. And I declare she had it all ready. I looked at it carefully; it seemed all right, and I paid her the money. I kinder noticed there was a young fellow sittin’ in the room. Well, sir!”

“Well, judge?” The judge’s manner grew impressive.

“Next week that young fellow--Bill Pepper he was, an’ he was just twenty-one--he brought an ejectment against me. _She had married him that morning._ So Bill Pepper kep’ the land, and Mrs. Pepper kep’ the money.”

In the laughter that followed I became conscious of Raoul pinching my arm mysteriously. “I want a word with you in private,” said he. “Would you mind coming out upon the cow-catcher? It’s been railed off on purpose for observation,” he added, answering my look of amazement, “and it’s a first-rate place to see the cobweb trestle from. It’s something about the young ladies,” he added, seeing that I still hesitated, “and there’s really no other place.”

I looked through the car, but perceived the ladies were sitting in earnest conclave. On the front platform Mrs. Langworthy and the baby were taking the air. In the cab of the engine were the two girls. I suppose I made a gesture of assent, for Raoul nodded to the engineer, who slowed to a halt that almost threw the Langworthy’s domestic group into the bed of a brawling mountain stream some three hundred feet below.

“These gen’lemen want to ride on the pilot,” shouted the engineer in explanation; and we took our way to that exalted perch, where, sitting cross-legged and with hands nervously gripping the rail, I listened to Raoul’s story.

The Misses Bruce, he said, were wild not to go back that day with the railroad party, but to drive to the end of the location through the woods.

“Great Heavens!” said I, “but only Coe and I are going, with Captain Healy. There is nothing but tents----”

“The ladies are used to camping out.”

“But it will be so rough--there are two thousand niggers in camp!”

“The ladies are not afraid.”

I certainly was; for just then, with a preliminary corkscrew-like lurch, the engine began climbing the famous cobweb trestle; the earth suddenly vanished beneath us and we looked down through a lath-like tracery of wooden girders to the foaming stream, now four hundred feet below. I heard a cry behind, and looking timidly around, I saw the pale face of Jeanie at one engine-window and of May Bruce at the other.

“But--but there is no chaperone,” I gasped.

“Mrs. Judge Pennoyer has agreed to come,” answered Mr. Raoul, sweetly.

5.

THE end of our journey lay upon the very summit of the mountain ridge; twenty leagues of forest all around. Here, with the sweep of his gesture to the westering sun, Judge Hankinson made the great speech of the day. I remember little about it save that he likened Coe to Icarus, referred to me (General Higginbotham) as one of the merchant princes of the Orient, and to Tim Healy as some mighty magician “spinning his iron spell o’er mountain and o’er sea.” The rusty iron rails stopped abruptly in a field of stumps; beyond and below us stretched “the right of way.” Only a broad swath cut through the forest, the trees heaped where they fell, like jack-straws. At the edge of the clearing stood a three-seated wagon and a pair of mules.

Everyone took very simply to the proposition that we were not returning; and after all the speech-making was over and all the whiskey drunk, the train, with prolonged and reiterated tooting, began backing slowly down the mountain toward civilization again.

“Isn’t this delightful?” said Miss Jeanie. Tim Healy sniffed.

I had made it all right with Coe; but Healy still looked at the proceeding askance.

“Last time I rode through this yer wood I had the pay-chest with me; and two bullets went through my hat. And last week they killed the United States mail and Jim, the storekeeper of Section Fourteen.”

I considered this to be a story for tender-feet, so I mildly hinted that “they” would not attack so large a party.

“Won’t they, though? The only double mule team as ever goes through yer is the month’s pay, an’ hit’s jest due this Saturday.”

“Who is ‘they’?” said I.

“Moonshiners. But they’re all on ’em up to it. Hope you’ve got your shooters?”

By this time we had started, and were driving through the twilight of the forest over a trail hardly perceptible where the wood grew scantier.

“Not I,” said I, “I never carry them.”

“Nor I,” said Coe, “I left ’em on the bureau at home.”

“All right,” said Tim, gloomily. “But most fellers like a shot of their own afore they turn their toes up.”

Miss Jeanie produced a small, pearl-handled, silver-mounted revolver, and begged me to borrow it. Miss May handed the mate of it to Coe; and young Raoul displayed a formidable pair of Smith & Wesson’s, where he was sitting with her on the back seat.

“All right,” said Tim, somewhat mollified. “But the wood’s chock full of chickers all the same.”

At this the ladies appeared really so terrified that I asked what “chickers” were, and discovered them to be a kind of insect.

“I’ve got my pennyr’yle,” said Mrs. Judge Pennoyer, who was a woman of resource.

What a drive it was! We lost our way; and the girls sang. Tim swore, Mrs. Judge Pennoyer laughed, and May and Jeanie sang all the sweeter. Tim Healy thought he saw twenty moonshiners and emptied his revolver at one of them; a charred stump it proved to be. We passed one hut in a clearing, and were refreshed by veritable whiskey; _i.e._, “pine-top” whiskey, milky-white in color, and said to be made out of the cones of pines. We found the trail once more and the stars came out, and the nightingales sang, and May Bruce and young Raoul became more silent. At last we saw, upon a hillside in the forest, the burning pitch-pine torches of the great construction “camp.” Hundreds of black forms surrounded these ruddy fires; from some of the groups came sounds of banjos and negroes singing; and I looked suddenly up and saw the starlight reflected in Miss Jeanie’s eyes.

There was only one tent in the camp with “sides” to it--_i.e._, perpendicular flaps making walls below the roof, and that, of course, was sacred to the ladies. We lay beneath a mere =V=-shaped canvas roof, which was stretched downward so as to end some three feet from the ground, our heads in a heap of pillows, and our legs all radiating outward, like a starfish, to terminate in thirty booted feet. Under the canvas back I could see the starlight, and there I lay awake some time regarding it, which now seemed to bear some reflection of Miss Jeanie’s eyes. Next thing came the sun and opened mine by shining into them; then closed them up again, and I rolled into the canvas-shade, and up, and out of doors, and followed Coe and Healy to the “branch” below. Big Bear Creek it was, of a rich red-chocolate color, fit, perhaps, to wash a Chinaman who could not see. Yet Coe took a plunge, and looked up, white enough.

“Come in,” he shouted to us, who were hesitating, “it doesn’t come off.”

The negroes had been sleeping all over the place, tentless; and now they were pulling themselves together, in groups, and starting for the railroad, or rather where the railroad was to be. On the way they stopped at the commissaries’ to get their breakfast, standing in long rows before the counter, waiting their turn. The commissaries’ stores were the only wooden buildings in camp; well walled and bolted, too, as they had to be, said Tim Healy, to withstand the attacks of a riotous Saturday night. Four men, he said, were always in them armed; and on Saturday nights, pay-night, they would often empty a revolver or two into the crowd and perhaps “drop” a nigger, before it ceased to besiege their doors for fruit or whiskey.

Then we all went to breakfast, the Misses Bruce both fresh as dewy wood-flowers, and Mrs. Judge Pennoyer radiating amiability. Only the head commissary and the section contractor were thought of sufficient social importance to breakfast with us, and the former from his stores brought many delicacies in cans and bottles. Then after breakfast we went to walk--the ladies with sunshades and gloves--upon the location; a broad swath cut through the rolling forest and undulating far as the eye could reach in either direction, dotted with men and mules. Ahead, they were still blowing out stumps with gunpowder and dragging them away; where we stood was being built an embankment of gravel; and they were dragging out gravel from the “cut” ahead and heaping it upon the long mound. I gave my hand to Miss Jeanie and helped her up. Each black negro worked with a splendid mule; seventeen or eighteen hands high perhaps, dragging a curious sort of drag-spade, which the mule knew how to catch in the gravel, turn out full, drag the load evenly along, and then tip it out adroitly at the precise spot, a foot in front of the last dump; the negro hardly doing more than standing by to see the mule kept working; not, of course, working himself. Thus each man-laborer became an overseer, if only to a mule.

“The mule’s the finer animal of the two,” said Coe, “and much the more moral.”

“But he’s got no vote,” grunted Jim. “Ef we didn’t keep them black Mississippi niggers up here off’m the farms, they’d swamp us all.”

“Are they allowed to bring their wives to camp with them?” queried Miss Jeanie, softly; and, following her glance, we saw several coal-black damsels sitting in the warm sand-bank at the side of the cut, their finery about them, and evidently established there for the morning, basking in the sun.

“Oh, yes, they bring up their wives,” said Healy, reluctantly. “If we didn’t, they’d run away every two or three days. Nothing a contractor dislikes so much as irregular labor.”

“But it shows they have some good in them to be so devoted,” said Miss Jeanie.

“We don’t all of us have emotions stronger than money-getting,” added I.

“I don’t know about emotions,” said Tim. “There’s forty of their wives and eighteen hundred niggers, and every Saturday night they has a fight an’ a batch on ’em gets killed, an’ I know it’s terrible expensive on labor. Most as bad as moonshine.”

“Have you got King Kelly, yet?” said Coe, in an undertone.

“Hush!” hissed Captain Healy, dramatically. Just then I noticed a file of peculiarly idle negroes sauntering down the “right of way;” they had passed us once or twice before, and appeared to have no occupation. “See anythin’ peculiar about them niggers?”

“They are very lazy,” said Coe.

“They look like minstrels,” said Miss Jeanie.

“By gracious!” cried Healy, slapping his thigh, “if she hasn’t hit it!” We looked at him inquiringly; he dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “Come up here,” and he started, dragging Mrs. Judge Pennoyer by one hand up the new gravel slope beside the line. Raoul followed, with Miss May; he had been very silent that morning; and I with Miss Jeanie. Her little foot was buried at once in the sliding gravel, over the dainty low shoe; I wanted to carry her up, had only propriety sanctioned it. At the top, Healy swept the horizon as if for spies; then bending over us, all in a close group, he said:

“Them ain’t real niggers--them’s United States revenue officers from New Orleans, under General McBride.”

“General McBride?”

“He’s in hidin’ in my hut. He wouldn’t black up. But them deputy-marshals thought it was a spree. We had to do it. Every Saturday the niggers are paid off--one dollar and fifty cents a day, nigh on to ten dollars apiece--an’ then King Kelly he’d come down from his stills in the mountain, with his men loaded with casks o’ pine-top, warranted to kill--an’ by sundown eighteen hundred niggers would be blind-drunk, an’ fit for shootin’. On last Sunday we lost sixty-two hands. An’ the head contractor, he swore nigh to lift yer ha’r off.”

“Sixty-two men killed?” cried Jeanie, in horror.

“Some killed, some wounded; but it tells on the contract just the same. Why, you could have heared ’em poppin’ all over camp.”

The Higginbothams had always been abolitionists; and I felt my ancestors turn in their complacent graves.

“Expect to get Kelly this time?” said Coe.

“Dunno, we’ll see at twelve o’clock, when they’re paid off. It’ll be quite a thing to see, all the same. But the ladies had better stay in their tent. An’ it’s eleven now, so I reckon we’ll go back to camp. See, there go the marshals.”

When we got back to camp Raoul received a telegram. He read it hastily, and crumpled it into his pocket; but, I thought, looked troubled.

Jeanie and I wandered down by the brook side before dinner, and afterward Raoul, Healy, Coe, and I sallied forth to “see the fun.” We were let into the chief commissary’s hut, the front of which, above a strong wooden bar, was open; and before it a great crowd of negroes, singing and dancing, and a hundred others, in a long queue, waiting for their pay. “You kin lie down on the floor ef they git to shootin’,” said General McBride, whom we found there smoking placidly in a cane-seated chair. “Those revolvers won’t carry through the boards.”

It was a curious spectacle, that line of coal-black, stalwart, “swamp” negroes; and then to watch the first human expression--in their case greed--impress their stolid features as they took their pay. Among the crowd we noticed many bearded, well-armed, flannel-shirted mountaineers; these we took to be the moonshiners; and near each one, but loitering as if to avoid attention, one of the made-up negroes; to us now obviously factitious. It was a wonder the moonshiners did not find them out, but that they were intent on other things.

“See, that’s King Kelly,” whispered General McBride. “That big fellow there with the slouched hat and rifle.” Having said this, I was surprised to hear him, when the last man had been paid off, get up and make a speech to the navvies, in which he congratulated them that the camp had at last been freed from that great pest, Kelly; and urged them to save their money and be abstemious. “I am General McBride, of New Orleans----”

“Three cheers for Gineral McBride, of New Orleans!” cried a big mulatto opposite, I thought at a sign from Healy. They were given, not very heartily.

“And I’ve come up to see those poisoners keep away.”

I had seen the man he said was Kelly start and look about him, as if for other enemies; then he stood still nervously, and fidgetted at his gun. Meanwhile the General made quite a speech, apparently thinking the opportunity too good a one to remain unimproved. He took every occasion to heap obloquy upon the head of Kelly, king of the moonshiners; and concluded by lamenting that that “poor white trash” would not dare to show his head in camp while even he, McBride, was there alone.

“Look yar,” shouted Kelly, striding up to the bar of the tent when he had got through, “I’m the man you call King Kelly; an’ I’ve got four stills a-runnin’ within a bit an’ a screech of this yer camp; an’ I kin tell yer it’s deuced lucky yer white-faced, biled-shirted revenue officers stayed down to New Orleans.”

“And I,” said another, “I own a still myself; an’ it ain’t goin’ ter stop up fur no United States Government--though we’re mighty glad to see the Gineral, ez he comes here sociable and pleasant like.”

“And I,” “and I,” “and I;” and three more strode forward, and I noticed a pair of pseudo darkies get behind each one as he moved.

“What’ll yer take ter drink, Gineral?” said Kelly. Quick as a flash, every man had four stout arms about his neck, choking him, and the handcuffs on his wrists. Not a shot was fired; and Kelly and his gang were safely immured in an improvised guardhouse. The General sank back upon his cane-seated chair.

“A pretty job, gentlemen,” said he. “What _will_ you take to drink? None of their pine-top, though,” he added, with a laugh. “Yet, I don’t know as you can hardly blame ’em--corn’s mighty scarce up here.”

“May I trouble you, sir, with a few words in private?” The voice was serious, but familiar, and appertained to Mr. Hampton Raoul.

6.

“I HAVE appealed to you, sir,” said Raoul, when we had abandoned the still quiet camp for the solitude of the forest, “to demand that which every gentleman has the right to ask of every other.”

I feared the man had some notion of a duel, and his next words did not tend to relieve me. “I have long loved Miss Bruce.”

I must have appeared disquieted, for he hastened to add, “Miss May Bruce, I mean. But until yesterday I did not know my love was returned. We have now resolved on being married.”

I expressed my congratulations, but intimated that I did not yet see how my aid was necessary.

“We have resolved to make our bridal journey to the White Sulphur Springs, in Virginia. We shall be married upon arrival there, and I should esteem it a favor initial of a life-long friendship if you, sir, would consent to be best man. Moreover, your escort may prove necessary to Miss Jeanie to return.”

My escort! to Miss Jeanie! I was to travel with her four hundred miles--meantime her sister philandering with this young man--perhaps make a visit at a fashionable watering-place--give away her sister in matrimony--and then make the principal bridesmaid companion of my journey home! And this young Huguenot, _pour sauver la situation_, called me her escort. I looked at Raoul; his attitude was impassive and his manner still courteous; but evidently he thought there was something unchivalric even in my hesitation.

“I--has Miss Jeanie Bruce,” I hazarded, “yet been told of your plans?”

“Of course--and she approves them. She can hardly invite you herself to join her party; it might look forward, as you and she, necessarily, will be left much to yourselves.”

Absent-mindedly I twirled the ring on my finger, still there, that she had given me. Evidently, as a gentleman, in the eyes of him, of her, and of her sister, there was nothing else for me to do. “I must see Miss Bruce herself,” I gasped.

“Certainly,” said Raoul. “I had reckoned, sir, that such would be your course. I will meet you in front of the commissary’s tent at three. We start at four.” He stalked off, and left me under the live-oak tree.

It was two o’clock. I felt that I must see Miss Jeanie at once. Nothing could exceed the good-breeding of her greeting; but she evidently expected me to go. The calm of her gentle voice told me so. I found the two beautiful young girls in afternoon toilette of white muslin, half reclining under their open tent, fanning themselves. I think I would not have been so much in doubt had not Jeanie been so very pretty. Then, how hazard, in the presence of her sister, and of her own soft eyes, the fear that she might be committing an impropriety?

And it was with the greatest difficulty and an acute sense of my own brutality, that I did so. I began by congratulating Miss May, which evoked a lovable blush. “You know we have to start after dark and drive twenty miles to-night,” said she, “to a station on the Georgia road--we cannot return the same way; Mr. Raoul has some reason.”

“Do you think that we four ought to go off--ought to go off just like that?”

Miss Bruce looked at me, amazed. Jeanie tried to help her. “Do you not have wedding-journeys in the North?”

“Alone, I mean,” I ended, desperately.

“Alone? Mrs. Judge Pennoyer is going.”

Mrs. Judge Pennoyer had all the elements of a true sport; and I went back to Raoul--(having had a long walk down the brook with Jeanie; her happiness in her sister’s prospects was quite charming)--an hour after the time fixed, less decided--I think there is some adventurous blood in the Higginbothams--and found the camp in a state of wild tumult. Raoul met me nervously.

“General McBride paroled Kelly and his gang,” said he, “and the moonshiners have come back from the mountains a hundred strong, and given the revenue officers twenty minutes to leave for New Orleans.”

“And are they going?” said I.

“They calculate, sir, to go,” answered Raoul, gravely. “The mule team will take them back to the head of the line, and there we have wired for a special to carry them back to Bagdad. I have decided it is best for us to go with them. The special train simplifies matters. I trust you have come to a decision?”

“I--I do not know,” said I.

“We certainly cannot leave them here in camp. Every nigger in it will be blind drunk before midnight, and they are fortifying the commissary’s store.”

“What on earth did McBride mean by paroling those ruffians,” I sighed. “It was beginning to be so pleasant.”

“It was an error of judgment. But it will be equally pleasant at White Sulphur.”

As we talked we had returned to the centre of the camp. There we found a picturesque scene. McBride and his men were seated in the glade of the live-oak forest, no longer disguised; around them stood or lounged some forty bearded mountaineers, all provided with long rifles. General McBride was sitting with King Kelly himself, amicably drinking his own “pine-top;” as we approached he rose to meet us and handed a telegram to Raoul, who cast his eyes over it and gave it to me, with the remark that it might assist my decision. It read:

“If cousins Miss Bruce are with you, detain them and escorts. Will
wire parental authority to-morrow.
“KIRK BRUCE.”

“I feel bound, sir, to ask you your intentions,” said McBride to Raoul.

“Miss May Bruce and I are to be married, sir.”

“In that case, sir,” said the General, “in the absence of parental authority I cannot, of course, interfere. Permit me to congratulate you.” They shook hands.

“And this Northern gentleman?”

“Goes with me, of course. And Mrs. Judge Pennoyer.”

“A most estimable lady. I knew her as a girl.”

“We thought of returning on your special.”

“An excellent idea. Particularly as I have an idea Mr. Bruce may pass us on Number Two. But stop--we have unluckily only one mule-team.”

“Is there no room?” I asked. For I, myself, was beginning to see the necessity of getting away--to White Sulphur or to Salem.

“Room enough--but you must remember we have nigh twenty miles through the woods. These gentlemen--” and the General waved his hand at the surrounding moonshiners--“will naturally take a few shots at us.”

We looked at one another in perplexity. The colloquy was interrupted by the appearance of Jeanie and May, in travelling dress again, but looking very charming, and Mrs. Judge Pennoyer. To her the situation was rapidly explained.

I have before remarked that Mrs. Pennoyer was a true sport. She rose immediately to the occasion, and desired to be introduced to King Kelly.

“Colonel Kelly,” said she, “these young ladies are travelling under my protection. One of them is engaged to be married to Mr. Raoul, and they are desirous of going to White Sulphur on their wedding journey. As there is only one wagon they must return with General McBride’s party. I trust the journey will be perfectly safe.”

Kelly scratched his head. “I can answer, of course, for these gentlemen here,” said he, “but some of my friends are out’n the mountain, and it may be difficult to notify them of the sitooation. Let me see your team,” he added, as if a bright idea struck him.

The General and Kelly walked off in the direction of the wagon. The ladies followed. Raoul, Healy, Coe, and I followed the ladies. The undisguised United States marshals followed us, and the moonshiners followed the marshals. It was a large wagon with high wooden sides, bound with iron, and was used for bringing supplies to camp. A team of six of the biggest mules--some fully eighteen hands high--was already being harnessed to it.

“Reckon you can fix the ladies safely,” said Kelly. “We are good shots on the mountain,” he added, significantly, to McBride.

“I see your idea,” said the General. “Bring some straw.”

The straw was brought and filled the bottom of the wagon. Upon this sat the three ladies. McBride, Coe, and Healy went on the high front seat; Raoul and I sat on the tail-board looking out behind; and the eight revenue officers disposed themselves, four on each side, sitting on the side-board with their legs hanging over. They had nothing but six-shooters, which, however, they displayed with some ostentation.

“Colonel Kelly,” said Raoul, slipping down after he had taken his seat, “lend me one of your rifles--I want it very particularly” (I heard him add the name of “Kirk Bruce,” in the ear of that chief of moonshiners), “and I’ll send it back in Number Four to-morrow.”

“By G-- you shall have it, sir.” And Kelly gave him his own. “I like your spunk, sir; an’ if you’n Mrs. Raoul will come back here without them darned biled-shirted gov’en’m’nt men, I’ll give you a real good time.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” said Raoul. “Good-by--and fire high.”

We departed amid quite a cheer; lumbering out of the picturesque great camp some two hours before sunset, and as we passed the negroes’ quarters, heard already sounds of revelry beginning. We felt the girls were fairly safe between the double rampart of men. Still, the General thought they had perhaps better not sing (which they were fond of doing), so the long ride was rather silent. Raoul lay leaning back, talking in whispers with May Bruce, and I was left to do the same with Jeanie. Coming to the last long hill before the end of the line, one or two shots were fired; but they whistled in the tree-tops far above our heads. We found the “special” waiting for us, got into the one “directors’ car,” and started safely.

But when we got to the siding at Bear Creek, Raoul asked the conductor which train had the right of way. Learning that the special had, he beckoned to me, and, taking his rifle, went out upon the rear platform. I followed, wondering. Our train was running rather fast, the engine having suddenly started up after Raoul’s conversation with the conductor; I presume to him also Raoul had explained “the sitooation.” At Bear Creek the regular up-train stood side-tracked waiting for us. We rattled by, and on its rear platform, in the moonlight, I saw a tall frock-coated figure standing. I had hardly recognized it to be Kirk Bruce when Raoul threw up his rifle, and I saw a flash of fire from the platform of the side-tracked Mr. Bruce. The reports were quite simultaneous; but neither was hurt, for I saw Bruce leaning his head out of the shadow of the platform to look at us, while Raoul remarked, as we went back into the car, now jumping wildly on the down grade:

“He knew I was yere, and I knew he was thar. You’d hardly see worse rifle-practice in the North.”

There was a tinge of disgust in his voice, and he went out to smoke on the engine.

“Was it Cousin Kirk?” said May to me, breathlessly.

I nodded. Jeanie blushed.

7.

THE United States marshals from New Orleans had kept rather quiet throughout the journey; but as we approached the city of Bagdad their spirits rose. The momentary interest caused by Mr. Raoul’s and Cousin Kirk’s shots had subsided when they learned there was nothing national or professional in the affair. Amateur shooting was always poor. But May Bruce was considered with more attention; and when their “special” of a “shirt-tail” engine and a caboose backed up to the Bagdad platform, they all requested to be presented to her. General McBride performed the ceremony with much formality; including Mrs. Judge Pennoyer, upon whom, I could see, they looked with a reverence that only her years divided from admiration. Even Raoul came in for some passive applause; but I played, as I saw, a very second fiddle, which is why, perhaps, Miss Jeanie and I went off and took a walk, by moonlight, down through the ravine where I first met her.

We returned to find Mrs. Pennoyer slumbering peacefully on a settee; but Raoul was walking up and down nervously. The straight track stretched glistening away in the moonlight, but not a train nor engine was in sight.

“How long do you think it’ll take Mr. Bruce to get down back here?” says Raoul to me, nervously.

“Train Number Two doesn’t come back till to-morrow, they said.”

“I know; but the station man here tells me the engineer on Number Two married a cousin of Kirk Bruce’s brother-in-law. Our train doesn’t come along from Memphis until four in the morning. And there’s not an engine to be had in Bagdad.”

“There’s one,” said I; and I pointed to a distant shower of sparks above the forest. At the same moment the peculiar light rattle of a “wild” engine was audible.

“My God, sir, so it is!” answered Raoul. “And it’s on the line of the Tennessee River and Gulf.”

“Number Two?” I answered, grimly, for I was getting to understand the ways of the place. “What shall we do?”

“Do?” said Raoul; “why, get ready, of course. He may shoot before he stops the engine; lucky I’ve got a rifle. You go in and prepare the ladies.... This is my quar’l,” he added, impatiently, at my demur. “Besides you ain’t got only that girl’s pop-gun. Reckon you’ll have a chance later, likely.”

So I went in, and told the girls; and we woke up Mrs. Judge Pennoyer, who, I am bound to say, took it more calmly than might have been expected from a lady of her years. May was tearful; but Jeanie’s eyes were very bright. All this time the rattle of the engine was growing louder down the grade.

“Haven’t you kept that revolver I gave you?” said Jeanie to me.

I looked at her; and went out upon the platform just in time to see the engine dash up, and a strange figure jump out of the cab.

“It’s all right,” he cried; “drop your iron. I’ve got a message from King Kelly.” I observed the man had a blackened face and uncouth costume; he did not look like an engineer, though a negro fireman was on the smoking engine. The saturnine Raoul tore open the envelope, read the letter twice, and handed it to me with the nearest approach to a chuckle I had heard him give. I also read it, while the negro fireman opened half his head and laughed aloud.

“What will you take, sir?” I heard Raoul say; then, as the ladies, overcome by the curiosity this unexpected-silence caused, came out upon the platform, I heard him introducing the man of the charcoal face to each in turn.

The letter was as follows:

“---- RAOUL, ESQ.

“DEAR SIR: A gentleman have arrived here on Number Two,
inkwiring for you, and I take him for to be a member of Mrs. Raoul’s
family, so I got him and his ingineer here in Camp and reckon I kin
hold him about till termorrer sundown.

“Yours trooly,
“LUCIUS R. KELLY.”

8.

BEATI POSSIDENTES. I now saw that under the methods of Southern courtship the man who had got the lady had a great advantage. The Memphis express pulled up at four in the morning in front of a burning tar-barrel on the track, which Raoul had placed there as a hint to it to stop at Bagdad. How our story always got out so quickly, I don’t know; but two members of Congress from Mississippi turned out of the two end sections and were accommodated with shakedowns in the smoking compartment of the crowded Pullman, with Raoul and myself.

I did not sleep very well, and at seven in the morning got out at Chattanooga. What was my surprise at seeing Mrs. Judge Pennoyer also emerge, fully dressed, from the sleeping-car.

“You young people don’t want me,” said she, benevolently. “I should only be in the way. An’ I’m getting out here to take the day train on to Knoxville. If I got out thar, they might stop ye before the train pulled out again; now ye’ll all get by unbeknownst.”

What could I oppose to such strategy? Moreover, the young ladies were still in their berths. I could not leave Miss Jeanie to come back alone. I bowed; the train started; I got in it.

The sunlight broadened, but it was high noon and we had passed Knoxville before the two girls appeared, fresher than the June morning, and rosier, I am sure, than Raoul or I. With some trepidation I told them of Mrs. Pennoyer’s evasion.

“Dear Aunt Emily,” said May, “she has always been like a mother to me.” But Jeanie, I fancied, blushed; and that day talked to Raoul, while May was left to me.

The impending catastrophe made May very gentle and silent, but we now heard Jeanie and Mr. Raoul in speech of much light laughter at the other end of the car.

“I suppose,” said I, “they are laughing at the way Mr. Kirk Bruce’s pursuit has stopped in moonshine.”

Miss. May looked at me inquiringly. “Cousin Kirk was never attentive to me,” said she.

“He is attentive enough now,” I laughed; and she looked at me as if about to say something--but bit her red lips.

Jeanie certainly avoided me. When Raoul came back to talk to his fiancée, her sister made pretext of a headache and lay down. The train was not a quick one, and stopped long periods at several stations, during which Raoul was obviously nervous. His brow only cleared when we got to Bristol, Va., about sunset. Here we stopped an hour for supper, half of which we four devoted to a walk. The town consisted principally of a long straight street, lined by low two-story brick shops; the one-story shops had false fronts and presented an appearance of uniformity. Boots, saddles, guns, groceries, and drygoods were the articles they sold.

I had noticed that Raoul kept persistently on one side of the street, and when I started to cross over, to look at a particularly gorgeous embroidered Mexican saddle on the other side, he held me back.

“This street,” said he, “is the State line between Virginia and Tennessee. I think we had better keep on the Virginia side.”

“How odd,” said Jeanie, “to have a town divided against itself!”

“It is a great convenience,” answered Mr. Raoul. “When my father and Colonel Carington had their dispute about the last constitutional convention, both were candidates for the governorship, my father in Tennessee and the colonel in Virginia. The constitution of Tennessee disqualified a man who fought a duel from holding office. So my father stood on the Virginia side of the street and the colonel in Tennessee. The distance between the sidewalks is just about right, as you see. There was a warrant out against my father in Tennessee and the colonel in Virginia.”

“And did they fight?” I asked.

“Oh, yes--and the sheriffs looked on, but they couldn’t cross the street. And the colonel, he allowed he was shot accidentally by a bullet from another State. The case went up to the Supreme Court, but they allowed they couldn’t say any duel was fought in Tennessee, and the Constitution does not disqualify a man for shooting, but only just for duelling.”

At this point a prolonged whistling recalled us to the station. Here we found an elegant Pullman car added to the train for our accommodation, “with the superintendent’s compliments to Mr. Raoul.” The darky porters in it were smiling broadly, and on the table was a huge bouquet of orange-blossoms.

In the morning we woke up--or Raoul woke me up--at the station for White Sulphur. He had a telegram signed “Emily Pennoyer,” which warned him to lose no time, that Kirk Bruce was on the night express.

“May and I have decided to go to the county Judge and get married directly,” said he. Our Pullman car had been shunted on a side track at the little station; the rest of the train had gone on, and the little village was quiet and fragrant as a bank of wild flowers. “Fortunately, he is a friend of my father’s.”

We found the Judge, I think, before his breakfast, smoking on his piazza, which was covered with jasmine and magnolia. He led us directly across the road to a little brick court-house, where he found another couple waiting already, more sheepish than ourselves, who had driven all night in a buggy, with an old white horse. The groom was awkward and embarrassed, with his trousers tucked in his boots; the bride was buxom and blushing, but seemed hardly more than a child.

“First come, first served,” said the Judge, and we all went into the court-house, where the clerk unlocked his register, and the blushing pair stood up before us, the groom having first hitched the old white horse to the fence outside. We four were accommodated with seats upon the bench.

“Do you think she’s twenty-one?” whispered the Judge to Raoul, while the rustic bride shuffled uneasily upon her new shoes.

“Twenty-one? She’s not eighteen,” said Raoul.

“Dear me,” whispered the Judge. “Guess she’ll have to be--reckon I’ll forget to ask her.”

The pair were married with us as witnesses; Jeanie gave the bride her parasol for a wedding present, and the old white horse and buggy scrambled away. “And now,” said the Judge, turning to Jeanie, “how old are you?”

There was a pause of embarrassment; then Raoul spoke up bravely: “It’s not Miss Jeanie--it’s Miss May Bruce, and she’s quite eighteen.”

“Eighteen?” said the Judge. “She must be twenty-one--or have you the parents’ consent?”

“No,” said Raoul. “Eighteen is old enough in Alabama.”

“Twenty-one in Virginia,” said the Judge. “Give me the Code.”

The clerk handed him a musty leather volume from beneath a musty leather Bible. Twenty-one it was, sure enough.

“Why did you say she was only eighteen?” said the Judge, peevishly.

“But you married the others,” answered I.

“True,” said the Judge, “but I’ve had a telegram for you--from a Mr. Kirk Bruce, who, I take it, is a relative of the bride.”

Raoul’s face maintained its customary look of quiet determination. “Where is the nearest State where a lady is free to get married at eighteen?”

“South Carolina,” said the Judge.

“All right,” said Raoul. “I’ve got a car, and I reckon Colonel Carington will give us transportation.”

“I’ll see that he does,” said the Judge, his face brightening. “I guess you’d better go to Charleston.”

“Spartanburg is the nearest point,” said Raoul. “He’ll never think of Spartanburg.”

“True,” said the Judge, “he’ll never think of Spartanburg. Lucky, Colonel Carington is at the Springs.”

In two hours we had borrowed an old freight engine and were off on our way to Spartanburg.

9.